


Homecoming

by Baozhale



Category: Young Wizards - Diane Duane
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-06
Updated: 2014-07-06
Packaged: 2018-02-07 17:57:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1908408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Baozhale/pseuds/Baozhale
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nita's coming home from Ireland!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Homecoming

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Birke](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Birke/gifts).



Once again, Nita was being brought to an airport, though this experience was entirely different from her last ride. Once things had calmed down post-intervention and the explanations (still on-going, longer than the events requiring intervention as they always seemed to be) began to calm enough that Annie could beg time with the soon-departing niece, she wanted to hear _everything_ about Nita's wizardly practice. Everything Nita was willing to tell, in any case. 

 

“You volunteered to be eaten by a _shark_?!” Aunt Annie gasped. “I knew you used your wizardry far more there than here, and that you got to take bigger risks, but a shark?”

 

Nita laughed, as she had been doing more in the last few days. “Well, that's whale-wizardry more than New Yorker's human wizardry. It's an older branch, or so Tom said, and after the Song of the Twelve, I believe it. Dairine had trouble believing it too, apparently.”

 

“And what's day-to-day look like for her, anyways?”

 

“Imagine intergalactic Skype. 'No, I will not move your planet! What do you want it moved for? It's fine right where it is!” And she gets problems to do with beings where... I don't even understand what kinds of problems single-celled creatures have, or how they have wizards to call her in for consults, but they do, and she's the answer to problems I can't understand. That power rating, too, well, you saw. I bet she _could_ have moved whoever's planet, if she'd thought it was the thing to do. She moved a black hole on Ordeal, though that was with help from the computer wizards she helped make. Half the time I'm not convinced she's fully human anymore, really, but if that's good or bad or just what is...” Nita trailed off.

 

“We're going to want the manual chat functions for this, aren't we?” Annie asked. “There's just so _much_.” 

 

“Yeah, and there's a smartphone app that Kit helped me configure when we found out I was being sent here. I can walk you through it over the chat function if there's not time between the rushing around and waiting forever.”

 

“Airports and worldgates both,” Aunt Annie sighed, as they started getting into the (smaller, less congested) airport traffic and the dance of the aiport began. There was the airport traffic, the airport parking, the airport shuttle bus, the crowded terminal, the check-in lines, the baggage check-in: Nita took the weightlessness spell off her bag before it had time to confuse the check-in people, glad that she wouldn't need to calculate for overlay next time she spelled it, should she need to on the other end. 

 

Then there was passport check, and the escort for minors flying alone. This lady was far friendlier than the one who had met her in New York, but Nita still had to suppress her laugh at the thought of walking through galactic and intergalactic transit hubs with less fuss. 

 

Security, boarding, falling into a less than restful sleep soon after take-off and considering using wizardry to deal with her jet-lag as she woke up during landing... Nita found time to be moving far too slowly.  _I want to be home, with Mom and Dad and Dairine, yes the runt, and Kit, and be going on where I go on, this feels so slow!_ But then she was off the plane, going through passport control and customs and  _No, I don't have that much monetary instruments, at least not by any Earth standards, I wonder what they would say if I declared my chocolate at Crossings prices?_ The thought was good for a suppressed giggle, then promptly forgotten about. 

 

Then she was through. Dairine came to pick her up, as she hadn't come to drop her off, probably wanting to know about the aftermath of the intervention she'd been told to stay home from, not wanting all their eggs in one very risky basket. Kit was there too, having beamed in rather than spend another awkward ride with Nita's parents and not Nita. Dairine was glaring at Kit, probably wishing he'd come so she could squeeze him for information...  _Is that why he really beamed in- not wanting to face Dairine without me?_ She felt a shrug in response. 

 

_Some of both, though I certainly dealt with her enough while you were gone!_ Kit thought at Nita.

 

And of course, her parents were there. She ran to hug them first: as much as she'd missed Kit, her parents were her parents and it'd been longer since she'd seen them- unlike Kit, they did not have the use of beam-me-up spells, nor were they yet comfortable enough with wizardry to ask Dairine to provide for them (and certainly not Kit, whose separation from Nita was a failed goal of sending her to Ireland in the first place.)

 

Hugs given and received in the chaos of international arrivals, Nita was perfectly happy to hand her non-weightless bag to her father and drift behind a bit to talk to Kit. Dairine followed at a less-casual stride before slowing to match pace with the overcrowded departures area. 

 

“C'mon, Nita, tell. I've already badgered Kit out of everything _he_ knows,” Dairine ordered her older sister.

 

“Well, runt, I bet you'd like to know just how important folks think you are. I got introduced as _your_ sister, when they said I got reassigned courtesy of the North American Regional, whatever that is. Which means even more folks know you're name and they're gonna remember you as the one who has the juice for the big stuff, have fun.”

 

“Like moving planets around some more,” Kit said, poking Dairine and ignoring her scowl. 

 

“ _No more planet-moving_ ,” she declared. “People keep coming to me wanting their planets moved, which sure, I can do it, but they don't even _check_ the other possibilities properly before they come to me. It's like they find the one option and stop looking!”

 

“Yeah, yeah. Would you rather wash all the tea cups? _Without_ wizardry.” 

 

Dairine snorted. “How is that even comparable?”

 

“You didn't see how the teacups breed, did you, passing out after bringing in the starsteel and leaving the dishes for us?” Nita stuck her tongue out at her sister- nuclear explosion capable of choosing when and where to go off or no, Dairine was still her kid sister the runt, and deserving of being teased. 

 

“Yeah, yeah. Like to see _you_ hold that timeslide in place. What'd I miss while I was out?” Dairine paused for a moment. “Other than tea, I mean.”

 

“While you were passed out, tea was about it,” Kit pointed out. “Not like any of us had energy to spare after supporting you pulling starsteel from the core of a star barely out of the Big Bang. Then you came to and I brought you home.”

 

Dairine scowled at him. “I swear, you're worse than Spot was when I first got him, because  _you_ are doing this on purpose. Spot was just doing what computers do, demanding specificity and accuracy.”

 

“Yeah, yeah,” Kit said. “You who works with computers complaining about it, and a wizard to boot.”


End file.
